Jewish publications have gotten into the habit of using the JTA as an unthinking resource. While the JTA has a long history to it, in recent years it has become deeply problematic.
This week, the JTA offered another compelling argument why no Jewish publication should be making use of it.
In response to the Taylor Force Act, which seeks to force the Palestinian Authority to stop making payments to terrorists, a number of anti-Israel members of Congress, most notably Betty McCollum, introduced a bill 'defunding' Israel's detention of Palestinian Muslim minors accused of terrorist acts. The bill is classic trolling.
The JTA story on it is so bad in so many ways
1. It doesn't note the context of the Taylor Force Act
2. It does not interview or quote a single person or organization opposed to the bill. And this is standard journalism. Even biased journalism. It does frequently quote anti-Israel groups supportive of the bill. There's really no other way to interpret that except as a strong bias in favor of the bill and against Israel.
3. The JTA story describes JVP or Jewish Voice for Peace only as a progressive or religious organization. And quotes it. It does not note that JVP is a BDS group opposed to Israel. It fails to note any criticism of it. Including its links to anti-Semitic rhetoric. You would think that at least the frequent ADL critiques of JVP would have warranted a note. But nope.
Not only is the BDS hate group violently opposed to the Jewish State, but it sponsored talks by Alison Weir, who had claimed that Jews drank Christian blood and engaged in the ritual murder of Christian children during the Middle Ages.
Weir promoted her anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on the radio show of a white supremacist and Holocaust denier. An article on her personal blog claims that, "The Zionists who created Israel and still run it are descended from the Khazars." Despite that, JVP continued hosting Weir. It cheered on Rasmea Odeh, a terrorist convicted of playing a role in the murder of two Jewish college students. When Miko Peled tweeted, "Jews have reputation 4being sleazy thieves", JVP initially disavowed him before apologizing for its reaction. This followed the same pattern of behavior that took place with Weir.
This is the ugliness that the JTA normalizes.
And it does so deliberately.
Compare that to the JTA's coverage of the Taylor Force Act which extensively quoted both supporters and opponents of the bill.
Pro-Israel bills get the pro and con treatment from the JTA. Anti-Israel ones just get pro coverage. And in the bargain, the JTA normalizes an anti-Semitic hate group linked to blood libels.
A lot of the JTA materials appear innocuous. But they are deeply biased and toxic. There are plenty of pro-Israel groups taking on the mainstream media. The media isn't going to change. A lot of that energy would be better used to bring change at the JTA. And at the Jewish publications that unthinkingly reprint its biased anti-Israel materials.